Читать книгу Here's Another - Lennie Lower - Страница 7

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Like curry and custard, love and politics don't seem to go well together. I've tried the mixture and served it up to the wife, but it makes her sick. If the wife had any sense, which she hasn't, she'd listen to me, and agree with me, and even, perhaps, encourage me. But all she does is to say, "Here, shut up and hold this," and I have to hold it and shut up.

We go shopping every Friday night. She wastes my hard-earned money on groceries and throws the parcels on to me as if I was a Thornycroft lorry. Then I buy a cigar, light it, and we walk about the town so people can see me smoking it. Last Friday night I was walking for three hours, nearly, before I saw anybody I knew. When I did see them the cigar had gone out, and I couldn't puff the thing at them. I had to content myself with waving it.

We look at shop windows: that is to say, she looks at them and I stand around. Sometimes I manage to sneak past a hat shop, but most times I get dragged back. She says, "That's a pretty cloche, dear!" A cloche is a hat.

I say, "Huh!"

"I wish we could afford a fur coat," she says, wistfully. "Even if it were only a coney."

"WE!" I say. "I like that! What the dickens could I do with a fur coat?"

"You never think of anyone but yourself !"

"Anyhow, think of the poor little coneys, stripped of their warm skins to make coats for us."

"Oh! I don't know how men can be so cruel!"

"They tear the little coneys from their mothers' bosoms and skin them alive."

"Good gracious!"

"In those circumstances you wouldn't care to have a coat made from their bleeding skins, would you?"

"Ar! You—!"

"Anyhow, if you had voted at the last elections instead of going to bed so I'd have to answer the door when the time-payment man called, you'd have had a fur coat by now."

"Would the Labor Party have issued us all with fur coats?"

"Arrgh!"

"You drag politics into everything. Last night, when you forgot to wind the clock, you blamed the National Party. You threw mother's parrot out because it looked like Bruce. As if a parrot could look like a man like that! Mr. Bruce is a handsome, he—"

"Have I nursed a viper in my bosom!"

"Don't you talk to me like that!"

"But listen, dear—"

"You needn't 'dear' me! I won't be vipered by anyone!"

"But I'm not vipering you, my dear, I'm just trying to point out —"

"Yes! If you did a bit more work and a little less pointing out I'd have a fur coat now instead of standing here like this, shivering in these rags. You and your politics! Here am I, slaving, working my fingers to the bone, trying to keep our bodies and souls together—"

"I can keep my own body together, thanks. And listen to me! If you think that politics have nothing to do with Friday night's shopping, that's where you're wrong for the first time in your life. Do you think you were given a vote so you could stay in bed and neglect the use of it? Don't you ever think? You're my better half, aren't you?"

"I reckon!"

"Well, what the—is the use of only half of me voting? Can't you see how your neglect and apathy affect me?"

Deep silence. I can see by the furrows in her brow that she is thinking. A good sign.

"If this country is mismanaged by a bad Government, who suffers? Me— Us, I mean. Can't you see the connection between groceries and governments, prices and politics?"

She scratches her nose and looks thoughtful. One thing about my wife she will listen to sense.

We get near home, and I put in a parting shot.

"Now, supposing a Labor Government got into power and reduced the tariff on fur coats—"

I pause for a moment to let it sink in.

"Len!"

"Yes, my love?"

I have evidently impressed her.

"Len, I never thought of it until now!"

"What, sweetness?"

"We've forgotten the beans!"

Beans!

When I got married, I made a great mistake.